Governor Hochul: “I stood up last year as part of my State of the State Address and said I want to make sure that every single mom in New York has fully covered, fully paid, prenatal leave time so she can make those important appointments.”

Hochul: “This will help over 136,000 pregnant women who now don't have to worry about losing money just to go to an important appointment.”

Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul announced a new statewide campaign to notify New Yorkers about the first-in-the-nation paid prenatal leave policy, set to take effect on January 1. Led by the State’s Department of Labor, New York’s statewide public awareness campaign is aimed at promoting New York State’s groundbreaking Paid Prenatal Leave policy. The campaign will officially kick off with the unveiling of subway ads. The goal of the awareness campaign is to educate New Yorkers and businesses about the new law and to remind pregnant women in New York State that they never have to choose between a paycheck and prenatal care.

B-ROLL of the Governor hosting a roundtable with mothers and children in Washington Heights is available on YouTube here and available in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here.

VIDEO of the event is available on YouTube here and available in TV quality (h.264. mp4) format here.

AUDIO of the Governor's remarks is available here.

PHOTOS of the event will be available on the Governor’s Flickr page.

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:

I just came from an interesting gathering of moms and babies to talk about one of my top priorities as New York's first mom governor: And that is making sure that the moms and their babies have the best outcome in life. And that means they can not be missing the prenatal appointments — which are so important for a mom's health to keep a regularly scheduled appointment with her doctor to make sure that if anything is going wrong with her health or the baby's, they're getting attention early enough to make sure that there's no complications later.

I know because I was able to take time off work for my doctor appointments when I worked for Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. I was a young staffer on Capitol Hill. I know what it's like to be very pregnant, taking the subway to my doctor's office, coming back, and knowing that I did not lose a dime of my income for doing something that was important for my health and the health of my babies.

Unfortunately, that's not the reality for too many moms across this country, and that's why I stood up last year as part of my State of the State Address and said, “I want to make sure that every single mom in New York has fully covered, fully paid, prenatal leave time so she can make those important appointments.” So beginning January 1, we want to get the word out to everyone that on January 1, New York will be the first state in the nation to require employers to provide the time off — up to 20 hours during the pregnancy. And this will help over 136,000 pregnant women who now don't have to worry about losing money just to go to an important appointment.

The roundtable I participated in with moms, they shared their stories of how they skipped their appointments. How they're afraid to take the time off work because they would be leaving money with their employer and not in their pocketbooks when they're trying to deal with the ever escalating costs of life in America. We talked about the challenges they face finding child care. And I'm really proud to announce that because of our intensive efforts, we have a 34 percent increase in the number of children eligible for our Child Assistance Program for child care programs. I'm going to continue on this path, because I know that programs, like our initiative, to make sure that if your family earns only $108,000 or less, you will not pay more than $15 a week for child care. Making sure that we help with your home heating costs. Making sure we build more housing. Making sure that we can help in any way we can to make New York State a more affordable place for moms and dads to raise their families in a healthy and beneficial way.